Stuck Emotions + Pain
This blog post could be 6 posts long, but I’m going to try and summarize the best I can.
In the beginning of my career, I swore I would never get into energy work. I didn’t understand it and the people around me feared it a lot. But, life is a journey, and it changes you. Over the past 10 years as a massage therapist, I have changed, grown and developed a lot. One thing I can’t ignore anymore is my intuitive gifts, helping people feel better by allowing emotions and energy to release and sharing my experiences of what I’m feeling with them.
I first started feeling my client’s emotions, whether it was dread, anxiety, panic or even depressive feelings. I knew then that I had to learn how to support myself and learn more about how to also support my clients. What came next was lots of reading, and talking to other massage therapists. They too felt these things and advised me to let the feelings go, allow God to take them, and to make sure that I was grounded and not holding all of that in my own body. I learned how to clear my own energy field and hold space for others. My integrity continued to strengthen and now, I feel much more connected and at ease with it.
Emotions are just energy in motion. That stuck feeling wants to move, release and let go. Feeling our emotions is how we heal, move on and forward. At some point in our lives, we started to push a lot of this down, repress our emotions and refuse to feel them. The more we do that, the more we create tension, pain, and dis-ease in our bodies. The more I learn, the more I can see how emotion and conflict held in the body lead to disruptions, pain, tension, inflammation and more. One of the biggest things you can learn to do is give yourself the space to FEEL each emotion that comes up, without judgement. We are meant to feel these things, it’s our bodies way of expressing what it needs. So let yourself feel the anger, shame, grief, etc. This is a hard process to let yourself fully lean into, but oh so worth it.
Things I ask clients (when feeling pain): If it came on suddenly, was there an emotion you were feeling?
Sit with your body, ask what it is trying to tell you. What’s the emotion, where did it come from, how did it start? What do you need to feel supported? Communicate with your body, it will tell you what’s going on! You might be super surprised. The anxiety I used to experience disappeared when I learned how to do this. As soon as I would start to feel anxiety, I would sit down, put a hand on my heart, take a few deep breaths and ask my body what was going on. I asked what I needed. I asked my body to talk to me. And, it always did. “You aren’t feeling supported, you need to rest, slow down, enjoy life.” were my most common nudges. Listening took some practice, but now, I can’t remember the last time I felt those feelings.
If you ignore your body when it whispers, it will start to scream. The more intune you become with your body, and it’s needs, the better you will feel. And you will be able to release things a lot more quickly.
The Emotion Code is a technique developed by Dr. Bradley Nelson, and it works by literally getting rid of emotional baggage that we have accumulated over the years and that is tainting our reactions to every situation in our life.
I love to use it, because it is a way to address the emotions and energetic side of our body with a specific technique. If you’re more of an empath, you may already be doing this with other techniques, or with your intuition. Other modalities that help heal energy and emotions include Reiki, Healing Touch, Myofascial Release, Chakra Balancing, Psychic Mediums & more. When emotions are stuck, they can cause disruption in our bodies energy leading to feelings of heaviness, pain, anger, and even disease in the body. The more I learn about all of this, the more I learn that every symptom in the body most likely has a emotional root. It could be something we’ve held onto since childhood, or it could be recent. If it is an older emotion, it probably effects how we show up in the world and how we interact with others. The Emotion Code book has many examples of how people changed after a treatment.
The broad idea is that we all have emotions, and when we don’t allow ourselves to fully feel an emotion in the present moment, it can become trapped in our bodies. We have already seen this with stress and how that can affect our bodies. Emotions could become trapped at any moment from any part of our lifetime. The goal is to fully feel our emotions, but society, parents, and others have told us to 'stop crying’ or ‘be quiet’ or that we are ‘being too much’. So, we learn to stuff our emotions, causing tension and build up within our bodies.
Trapped emotions tend to be at areas of tension, or get trapped in weakened areas of our bodies as well. The more I utilize The Emotion Code in sessions, the more blown away I am. By addressing the root cause, the held emotion, I have experienced deep physical releases as well. I still use Trigger Point Therapy in every session, but now, when something isn’t releasing, I lean into the Emotion Code and release what is causing that muscle to be so tight even deeper.
It never ceases to amaze me, once a client starts to open up, how connected everything is. Many people in history, including Louise Hayes have mapped out where emotions lie in our bodies and what we may be experiencing in our life, or where it comes from. Louise Hay's, ‘You Can Heal Your Life’ highlights mental thoughts and how they form physical experiences. For example, In her book, the hip is represented by fear of going forward in major decisions or nothing to move forward to in life.
Holding onto these emotions can cause disease, living in an untrue version of ourselves, pain, tension, being moody and more. It can affect our lives in so many, many ways.
How It Works
Your body naturally has magnetic and electric fields. All your molecules have a small amount of magnetic energy in them. The thought behind magnetic field therapy is that certain problems happen because your magnetic fields are out of balance. If you put a magnetic field near your body, it's believed things will go back to normal.
Ions like calcium and potassium help your cells send signals. In tests, scientists have seen magnets change how these ions act. However, so far, there isn’t evidence that magnets have the same effect on cells when they’re in your body.
Magnets emit pure energy and are powerful tools we can use to fix imbalances that are in your energy field, and therefore cannot see. Virtually any magnet can be used when doing The Emotion Code. Using magnets in therapy can have profound effects on people's bodies.
You are a being of pure energy. (pg.94) Your existence stretches further than you can see, because of your energy field. Each of us has an electromagnetic field. The EMF field of your heart is proven to stretch 8-12ft from your body in all directions.
Intention
Intention is a powerful form of thought energy. When intention goes, energy flows. It is possible to release emotions just using your intention. Using the magnets magnifies your intention to help release the emotion but they don’t NEED to be used.
The Governing Meridian
In acupuncture, there are lines through your body known as meridians. These can be thought of as small rivers of energy that flow just beneath the skin. They follow very precise tracks that do not vary from person to person, just like each person has the same muscles in the same spots. Along meridians there are acupoints that can be treated for specific purposes. These acupoints often match up to where trigger points are in the body as well.
The governing meridian is a meridian that serves as a reservoir of energy, which connects with and supplies all other acupuncture meridians. This is perhaps the most important meridian in the body. Because of its connection to all of the other meridians, it serves as the ideal pathway for our intention when releasing trapped emotions. A trapped emotion is energy, and to get rid of a trapped emotion, we need to overcome it with another form of energy. The governing meridian is the perfect window into the body for this purpose.
As soon as you find a trapped emotion, you can release it. While holding the intention to release the found trapped emotion in your mind, simply pass a magnet over the governing meridian. You magnified intention to release the trapped emotion enters into the meridian, and from there this thought-energy flows quickly into all the other meridians and areas of the body. This sudden influx of energy has the effect of releasing the trapped emotion instantly and permanently.
Where does a trapped emotion go? I ask God to take all releases and to support me with any work I do in the massage space. I believe all good things come from Him, including healing through The Emotion Code and energy work.
To find what Emotion is stuck, we use a chart and muscle testing. Using the chart, we test to see what emotion is stuck and ready to be released.
Healing will happen in layers, which is very common. Many emotions could be related to one issue. You may have an emotion come up many times, for different issues or time periods.
Since I started using this, first with my family and now in my massage room, I have seen many amazing results. Less pain, tension, and more importantly people feel so much more a peace, ease and relaxed. In my client tonight, I felt as if her body were able to come out of fight or flight mode and much more into rest and digest or her parasympathetic state. It was beautiful to experience.
So, to wrap up, I have learned a lot over the years of how emotion and energy can affect our bodies. I have read many books and learned as much as I could, as it’s meant on my journey. I still do everything I’ve always done with Trigger Point Therapy, but now when I am not feeling releases as quickly, I have more tools to get deeper and help the client release even more. Of course, I meet anyone where they are at. If someone doesn’t want that type of work, we honor that. It’s not something that I use in every session, just another tool I’ve added to my toolbox.
Feel free to comment, send me a dm or email to chat more about this! I find it all so fascinating, and love to continually learn as well. If you’re also interested in reading some of these books, a few I have read include:
The Emotion Code by Dr. Bradley Nelson
The Uncaged Mind by Katie Potratz (all about accessing our subconscious mind to heal pain and tension through hypnotherapy)
Heal Your Life By Louise Hayes
The Body Keeps Score: Brain, Mind & Body Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.
Metaphysical Anatomy: The Body is Talking, Are You Listening? By Evette Rose
And mostly I’ve learned, too, from so many mentors, other healers and more. If you’re ready, the information is out there. If you’re not, that’s beautiful too.
If you would like to book an Emotion Code (mixed with massage) session for yourself, it is now part of my offerings! You can book online here. It might take a couple months to get it, but it will be worth it! If you’d like to be on my cancellation list, feel free to email me at encompasstm@gmail.com letting us know to do so.
I hope this served you today,
xo,
Nikki